Heaven on wheels

Property specialist Berrick Wilson’s daughter was a day old when his wife Caroline noticed small twitches in baby Milla’s arm and leg. The nurses assured the first-time parents that everything was okay. But then Milla gagged and her face turned blue. She was put into the special care nursery at Cabrini Hospital in Melbourne’s Malvern. But at 1am, Milla’s doctors decided the emergency was beyond their skills. They rushed her by ambulance to Monash Medical Centre.

“We had never experienced anything like it," says Wilson. At Monash, Milla was diagnosed with a brain haemorrhage. Luckily, she was young enough that her skull was still soft, allowing pressure around the brain to be eased. After three weeks in hospital, she recovered. But the experience in 2006 would change Wilson’s life forever. During one of the long, nerve-racking nights in the hospital, Wilson made a promise: the experience must be turned into a force for good. “An idea was conceived in the heart of the stress," he says.

That idea was creating a charity bike ride, Chain Reaction, which would bring together cycling-mad corporate alpha-males and leverage off their networks to raise substantial funds for sick children. It’s not just any old ride, but a mental and physical challenge covering around 1000 kilometres in a week. For their moneymaking efforts, the riders get a week on the road with all the bells and whistles of a professional race, including a five-month training program. Various boardroom events ahead of the big week harness business relationships through the power of shared experience.

Since the first Chain Reaction ride from Adelaide to Melbourne in 2007 – when 32 riders raised a total of $475,000 – nine events in Victoria, NSW and Queensland traversing 235,000 kilometres have raised $7.3 million. Compared with mass-participation charity rides where each rider might raise a few hundred dollars, joining the Chain Reaction fray requires a much larger commitment – the 31 riders in last year’s inaugural NSW ride, from the Gold Coast to Sydney, raised an average of $33,000 apiece.

“It has really taken off and you can tell from the enthusiasm and excitement of the guys involved that we have found something interesting that people are keen to do and get behind," says Wilson, a partner at advisory firm KordaMentha.

Broker Troy Upfield is one who pedals the Chain Reaction route, and – like Wilson – his involvement was provoked by a paediatric medical emergency. In 2003, Upfield’s twin daughters were born 12 weeks premature. While Ruby was fine, the other, Lily, contracted necrotising enterocolitis, a potentially fatal condition that attacks tissue in the bowel. Doctors warned Upfield not to leave the hospital as his daughter was rushed into surgery. The procedure was successful but as Lily was recovering her arm went blue: the entry point for an intravenous drip had caused a miniscule blood clot. She needed another operation to save her arm. The surgeon equated the procedure with cutting a piece of hair and joining it back together again. The stress on first-time parents Upfield and his wife Josie was intense.

Reflecting on that day almost 10 years ago, Upfield says: “I was in a different world." And it got worse. The surgeon saved Lily’s arm, but she suffered brain damage during the medical crisis. She was diagnosed with severe spastic quadriplegia and is confined to a wheelchair.

An executive director at JBWere, Upfield says that after Lily’s crisis, he let himself go physically and emo-tionally. “Then I had a sudden realisation with Josie that we didn’t want to be victims, and we didn’t want to encourage our daughter to think she is a victim." A mutual friend introduced him to Wilson while Upfield was raising money for the Cerebral Palsy Education Centre, in Victoria’s Glen Waverley, which provides full-time early intervention care for kids including Lily. “We were doing fundraisers, raising $5000 or $6000, and it was a hard slog," Upfield says.

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The two men formed a deep bond around their respective experiences, with Wilson offering Upfield $250,000 from Chain Reaction’s 2009 ride in Tasmania to build a new wing on the cerebral palsy centre. There was one caveat: the unfit and non bike-riding Upfield had to join the ride as a member of the support crew, driving a van and filming. As he observed the group weave through the Tasmanian wilderness, Upfield’s initial reaction was that he couldn’t be bothered riding. “But around halfway through, I saw these guys become mates and thought this is a really good thing," he says.

After that epiphany, Upfield owns five bikes (including an S-Works Venge), is 25 kilograms lighter, and is preparing for his fifth Chain Reaction ride – this one dubbed ‘seven peaks in seven days’. The plan is to conquer Victoria’s Mount Buffalo, Falls Creek, Mount Hotham, Dinner Plain, Lake Mountain, Mount Bulla and Donna Buang on consecutive days in March. Upfield is also considering joining Chain Reaction’s NSW ride from Melbourne to Sydney over the Snowy Mountains, in April. This is serious cycling.

4:30am one morning last November: Berrick Wilson’s alarm jolts him from a deep slumber. In pitch black darkness he hoists himself up out of bed, creeps downstairs, dons a stylish Rapha kit of black Lycra shorts and white top with light blue arm sash, and climbs on his Colnago M10. After rolling through the Melbourne suburbs, he arrives at Kew Boulevard at 5:45am along with 20 other riders – Upfield among them – for a training session for the seven peaks. Under the watchful eye of Emma Carney, a two-time world triathlon champion, the group completes three laps of a street circuit, carefully practicing their rotation protocol to ensure everyone communicates clearly as they move on and off the front of the peloton. When they hit the open roads, seamless coordination is critical for the riders’ safety. The session finishes just after 7am and Wilson and a dozen others roll down to a café on Church Street for a casual debrief and some shop talk.

“A lot of people think cycling looks easy, but once you get into these endurance events, it takes on another dimension," says Daryl Browning, chief executive of property fund ISPT, who knows Wilson from their days as colleagues at Knight Frank. Browning joined the first Chain Reaction ride in the weeks following Wilson’s emergency with his daughter. As a major team sponsor, ISPT stumps up about $25,000 towards the $110,000 each team is challenged to raise – from team and jersey sponsorship to individual rider donations. ISPT uses the event to get closer to its associated lawyers and real estate agents, who are invited to ride with the team.

“The social interaction, relationship side of business has changed from the 1990s big, long lunch," Browning says. “People are far more circumspect about entertainment and the like, so where you can have participation events supporting a good cause, that can tick a lot of corporate governance and social responsibility boxes. It is cliché but it is win/win – you are getting your exercise and doing something constructive for someone else, not just drinking another bottle of wine."

Chain Reaction’s chief executive John Ward, who spent 20 years in investment management before joining the not-for-profit sector, says the arduous training regime before each of the events creates deep bonds between the riders from all the teams. “We often say that just because you do a Chain Reaction ride doesn’t mean you are going to get the deal, but it will get you a seat at the table."

Interest from sponsors is always strong but “converting that interest into actual dollars" has been more challenging in a tougher macroeconomic environment, says Ward. “What took me four or five conversations three years ago is now taking me 10 or 15," he says. “It is harder – but the dollars are still out there." Last year’s three Chain Reaction rides pulled in $2.7 million, backed by the likes of National Australia Bank, Colonial First State, Ernst & Young and Westfield. Donations support the Victor Chang Research Institute in Sydney, the Newborn Emergency Transport Service in Victoria, Brisbane Royal Children's Hospital and Starlight Children’s Foundation, among other charities.

Luckily, the surging popularity of cycling has helped attract more corporate dollars for such charity rides. Tour de Kids, a cycling challenge of 1000 kilometres over one week, has raised more than $5 million in 12 years for children’s charities, including Starlight. Last year’s event was supported by Virgin Australia, Colliers, ANZ Bank, Mirvac, Aviva and Visa, among others. Major sponsors pay $25,000, providing them with branding on a team jersey and two places in the ride. Richard Hunt, a principal of boutique corporate advice firm Fort Street Advisers, and a co-founder of Tour de Kids, says the real value comes from the shared adventure: “It is a phenomenal, life changing experience. You get something out of it that is more than being able to say ‘I wrote a cheque and got a tax deduction’."

Geoff Coombes, who founded another ride, Tour de Cure, says sponsorship is about getting “multiple layers of engage-ment". The charity has raised $3.6 million over its four years and is targeting $1.6 million from its Adelaide to Canberra ride in late April. When the ride was in its infancy, sponsors put their brand on the jerseys and cars but “now we do a lot more with our corporates in engaging their staff", Coombes says, citing the example of riders from the Commonwealth Bank team, which uses the event to visit regional branches and talk to local staff. Optus, Lexus, Pfizer, Huawei and Channel Seven also support the ride. Having Seven presenter Mark Beretta on the Tour de Cure board doesn’t hurt either. Beretta brought along the Sunrise team in 2010 and 2011 for daily live broadcasts from the road, which meant the sponsors got national exposure.

The various rides are competing for sponsorship. “We want to be the charity bike ride of choice among the business community," Chain Reaction’s John Ward says. For cycling nuts, the event is an easy sell. Besides the feel-good factor, they get to train with Emma Carney and to hang out with professional cyclists, such as GreenEDGE ProTour rider Simon Gerrans, who hosted a training camp in Mount Bulla in December. The voice of cycling, Phil Liggett, is a patron and rode with the group at last year’s training camp at the Tour Down Under in Adelaide. “We talk about delivering the Tour de France experience to our participants and ensuring the experience they have on the road is the best cycling experience they have had," Ward says.

During the week-long rides, the peloton of about 40 riders – at this stage nearly all men – is accompanied by a doctor, several masseurs, a dietician, a personal trainer, bike mechanics, an official photographer and other support crew. The idea is to inspire the riders to achieve physical feats beyond their wildest dreams. Wilson makes the fourth day the most challenging but organises an inspirational speaker for the night before. In Tasmania in 2009, he persuaded Upfield to speak publicly about Lily for the first time. Wilson says Upfield’s speech about how hard it was to find money for equipment and to pay specialist staff amid the daily pressures of parenting a child like Lily was “so powerful there wasn’t a dry eye in the place". Daryl Browning says he was spellbound and motivated to dig deep the next day: “As you ride, you think this is a lot easier than the challenges some of the children, and even the parents, have to fight. It gives you more perspective on life to make the most of the opportunities you have."

Having expected several riders to withdraw from the gruelling 200-kilometre ride that concluded with a heart-stopping 30 kilometre climb to the finish at Tarraleah in the state’s central highlands, Wilson was stunned when everyone finished. “The evening of night four – the euphoria was just unbelievable. Everybody felt like they had achieved something that was unachievable to them."